THE DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF A SECURE M-COMMERCE BUSINESS OVER GLOBAL SYSTEM FOR MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS (GSM)

ABSTRACT

Global system for Mobile Communication has changed the face of communication and information exchange, much as the internet did with the advances made in the mobile technology arena, new opportunities are created. Mobile commerce (m-commerce) is one such opportunity. Each new advance in technology brings with it associated risks. This project focuses on the risks involved with m-commerce for the business industry. This project provides a detailed overview of basic service that any m-commerce application should provide to the business industry. These principles provide the foundation for securing any financial transaction over untrusted Networks. The security of GSM networks has come under attack in the past. This is largely due to the fact that the GSM consortium opted to develop their security technologies in secret, rather than in public domain. This project aims to evaluate the security offered by GSM and access potential attacks in order to further understand risks associated with m-commerce business over GSM. The web pages developed here were designed to handle all these analysis and respond appropriately to the user. The underling workings of the system were developed using HTML for the web pages. The driving scripts were developed using Microsoft active server pages (ASP) and Visual Basic Net Scripts. The entire system was implemented on windows 2000 operating system platform. Finally, the entire system was designed to perform a full package of M-commerce Business over GSM.       

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1       BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Rarely has a new area of business been heralded with such enthusiasm as “mobile commerce”, that is the conduct of business and services over portable, wireless devices. Due to the astronomical growth of the internet users, maturation of the internet technologies, realization of the internet’s capabilities, the power of electronic commerce, and the promising advancement of wireless communication technologies and devices, mobile commerce has rapidly attained the business fore – front. M-commerce, although not fully mature, has the potential to make it more convenient for customers to spend money and purchase, goods and services. Since wireless devices travel with the consumer, the ability or perhaps temptation to purchase goods and services is always present. This is clearly a technique that can be used to raise revenue. Also the successful future of m-commerce depends on the power of the underlying technology drivers and the attractiveness of m-commerce applications.

M-commerce is an e-commerce with wireless access. E- Commerce is the subset of M-commerce. If one wants to operate an M-commerce site, one should make arrangement to facilitate exchange of goods and services via the site. In this regard, buyers or customers could:

• View the goods and services available.
• Purchase any point if goods and services using the shopping cart. Shopping cart is the electronic site like software that will pick anything you buy from the shop to shopping business.
• One should have a means of making payment for goods and services selected for purchase. Typically a number of payment systems are displayed or provided and the user selects the one of most interest to him or her.

Furthermore, each payment system can operate by entirely different 

Independent body and not necessary by own M-commerce exchange. Adequately arrangements are however made between the owner M-commerce exchange, the owners of goods and services market through the exchange and payment services providers. Ideally, it is the owner of the M-commerce exchange that should negotiate with each of payment service providers and (as a separate process) negotiate with goods and services provider. 

1. OPERATION FEATURES OF M-COMMERCE
2. Anyone who has goods and services to market contact the M-commerce, to be included in the online database of the M-commerce exchange.
3. If there is an approval after processing the online form the goods and services providers is requested to provide information about goods and services and load it to the M-commerce site. Such information include name of each items, item code, brief description, unit cost, delivery items, quality discount and any other information the M-commerce exchange may deem necessary.

It is responsibility of the M-commerce exchange designs to providers a home page featuring a broad classification of goods and services offering. As the user clicks on a choice another page of tittles would come up to reappear the user to see the particular item of interest.

Before negotiating through the available goods and services a user should be requested to choose whether he or she want to view or purchase the item of interest a shopping business would be deployed were item selected by the user replace along with the individual cost and cumulative cost. When the user indicates that he has finish selection, the payment option are them displayed so the user can select a mean of payment.

The payment system operates on the total cost of the item in the shopping chart and handles all aspect of security for such online payment. Depending on the arrangement made by the M-commerce exchange operators each online payment system provider would credit the amount of online exchange operators with the payment made by the buyer less the agreed commission due to payment system provider.

In the context of M-commerce, the normal expectation is that the M-commerce exchange can be accessed via handheld or portable devices from anywhere in the world where there is internet connectivity and at any time of the day, all year round. One major advantage of M-commerce exchange concept explained above is that anyone who decides to use the exchange need not know anything about the internet but can have goods and services are marketed via the M-commerce exchange web sites. Furthermore, anyone (middle men) without their own goods and services can arrange to sell other people’s goods and services via the site.  This creates job opportunity for many without transferring the responsibility of internet on online marketing directly to them.

E-commerce (electronic commerce) can be defined as the mutual exchange of perceived or monetary value by electronic means over open accessible networks. This basically means communication over the internet for some or all of the transaction processes (ARC Group 2000).

M- Commerce (M-commerce) can be defined as any transaction with added value for the user, which is carried out by means of mobile/wireless device or infrastructure (ARC Group 2000).

M-finance (m-finance) is a subset of M-commerce that offers a range of banking share dealing and insurance services (ARC group 2000).  With the coming of advanced and sophisticated services, mobile communications combined with e-commerce proportions are heightening the attractiveness of M-commerce. The key drivers of this are.

• Ubiquity: The anytime anywhere” advantage of M-commerce (ARC group 2000). Smart phone may fulfit the need for both real time information and communication, independent of the user’s physical location (Miiller-veerse, 2000).
• Reachability: Using a mobile terminal, a user can be contacted anywhere anytime. Mobile handsets also provide users the ability to restrict their reachability to certain people (Miiller-Veerse, 2000).
• Personalization: Handsets are effective personal accessories that are capable to holding data and enabling access to information and services tailored to the needs of each individual (ARC group 2000).
• Localization: Nothing where the user is and providing information relating to that location adds a unique value to mobile services.
• Convenience: Mobile subscribes have become accustomed to their devices that store data and are always at hand. More advanced applications are driven by technology further enabling the mobile subscriber.
• Convergence: Technological applications can be decoyed on the move. This is blurring the divide between mobile phones and PCs. Even increasing sophistication and functionality sustains further handset development.
•  Internet Access: Instant connectivity to the internet from a mobile device is fast becoming a reality and will take off with the introduction of GPRD. This suggested that mobile devices will become the preferred means of accessing information on the internet.

However there are also several factors that may slow or constrain the progress of M-commerce. These inhibitors include the following.

• Security: The public has serious concerns about the security of the internet. This has been s major constraint to consumer e-commerce. This negative perception may be transferred, or potentially magnified to the mobile arena (AGC group 2000).
• Interoperability: Due to the range of handset functionalities and operating systems, there are inherent costs associated with delivering a range of services. This may determine some content providers from making the investment and carrying the overheads associated with such a service.
• Usability: The internet provides rich content via the large screens and multimedia capabilities of PCs. The constraints imposed on the mobile handset might limit its appeal to users (ARC group 2000).